Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers - Martin Evening [73]
Figure 3.5 The subfolder naming options.
4.
I then clicked on the Advanced dialog button in the bottom left corner (see Step 2), which revealed this expanded version of the Photo Downloader dialog. This allowed me to see a grid preview of all the images I was about to import from the card. I could now decide which images were to be imported by clicking on the thumbnail checkboxes to select or deselect individual photos. You can also use the Check All and Uncheck All buttons in the bottom left of the dialog to select or deselect all the thumbnails at once.
The Rename Files section allowed me to choose a renaming scheme from the options shown in Figure 3.6 . Which you should choose here will depend on what works best for you, and this is a topic I will explore in greater detail in the Image Management chapter. In this example I chose to rename using the shoot date followed by a custom shoot name. I could see how the renaming would work by inspecting the Example filename below, where as you can see, the imported files were automatically renumbered beginning from the start number entered here. If you check the ‘Preserve Current Filename in XMP’, this gives you the option to use the Batch Rename feature in Bridge to recover the original filename at a later date.
The Advanced Options let you decide what happens to the imported images after they have been renamed. You will most likely want to check the ‘Open Adobe Bridge’ option so that Bridge displays the image download folder contents as the images are being imported. In the Apply Metadata section you can also choose a pre-saved metadata template (see Chapter 11 ) and enter your author name and copyright information. This is then automatically embedded in the metadata of all the files as they are imported.
If the ‘Convert to DNG’ option is selected, this can be used to convert raw images to the DNG file format as they are imported. For some people it can be useful to carry out the conversion straight away, but be warned that this will add to the time it takes to import all the photos.
Converting to DNG
To read more about converting proprietary raw files to DNG and the conversion settings shown here, please refer to pages 248–250 at the end of this chapter.
Figure 3.6 Here are the options for the Rename Files menu, highlighted in the dialog above.
5.
If you click on the Settings… button (next to the ‘Convert to DNG’ option in Photo Downloader) this opens the DNG Conversion Settings dialog shown here. If you select the ‘Medium Size’ JPEG Preview option, this will generate a standard size preview for the imported pictures - there is no point in generating a full size preview just yet since you may well be changing the camera raw settings soon anyway, so to get reasonably fast imports it is better to choose ‘Medium Size’. Check the ‘Compressed’ option if you would like smaller file sizes (note that this uses lossless compression and does not risk degrading the image quality). In the Image Conversion Method section I suggest you don't choose ‘Convert to Linear Image’, but choose ‘Preserve Raw Image’ as this keeps the raw data in the DNG in its original state. And lastly, you can choose to embed the original raw data (along with the DNG data) in the DNG file, but I would advise against this unless you really need to preserve the proprietary raw file data.
6.
After I clicked on the Get Photos button in the Photo Downloader dialog, the images started to download from the card to the disk location specified in the Save Options in Step 4. The above progress dialog showed me how the download process was proceeding.
7.
Because the ‘Open Adobe Bridge